


no salvation for me now

by more_than_melody



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Royai - Freeform, Young Royai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/more_than_melody/pseuds/more_than_melody
Summary: After two years, Roy returns to learn the secrets of flame alchemy.He wants to make her laugh.It has been so long since he talked quite like this, about such trivial things and without worrying what someone will think. She has always been so good at listening - he finds himself wondering why he hadn't tried to call her in the last two years.“What about you?” he asks.She just shrugs, tugging at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt.“You know what it's like here,” is all she says.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	1. it comes with a price

_This is a gift, it comes with a price_

_who is the lamb and who is the knife?_

  
  


Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) – Florence and the Machine

* * *

  
  


Roy stands at the end of the drive, trying to work up the nerve to approach the front door of the old house.

It's early – maybe almost too early – but the overnight train he took had arrived close to seven and he had lingered in town as long as he could over a cup of coffee before getting a cab to drive him out here.

He checks his watch. Quarter after nine.

At last he steels himself, picking up his suitcase. He made it through the military academy – how can this be any harder?

The sound of his boots on the gravel drive is overloud, the creak of the sagging steps up the front porch breaking the stillness of the morning.

Two years it has been since he set foot on the front porch of Master Hawkeye's house. He's nervous, even if he doesn't want to admit it – they did not part on the best of terms. Still – he needs this.

He knocks on the door and waits, holding his breath.

The front porch has seen better days – although, what days those might have been, Roy has no idea. It looks little worse for wear than when he left last. The window to the right of the door still has that jagged, lightning bolt crack, the warped boards beneath his feet peeling paint. Doorknob tarnished, drawn curtains dusty and moth eaten.

No one answers.

He checks his watch again – half past nine - surely they're awake at this hour, unless things have changed drastically in the two years he's been gone.

The sun is not quite yet above the tree line behind the house, filtering through grey clouds. It's early spring – the trees are bright with first growth of the season. The weather is seasonably chilly and damp – even in his uniform the cold seeps through him as he stands there.

He knocks again, a little more firmly this time.

Still no answer.

Maybe they aren't home, although he has no idea where they might have gone. Master Hawkeye is not one for vacation, and his daughter wouldn't be at school on a Saturday. He does consider that he might have called before coming - but he knows from experience that the phone is not always connected, the bill not always paid, so he probably wouldn't have reached them anyway.

Not that he's tried. He feels a twinge of guilt at that – with him gone these last two years who has she had to talk to? Her father was never much use for company.

After several minutes spent contemplating the spiders that have accumulated in the disused porch light he gives up and retreats.

The back door is more difficult to reach than he remembers although it could be because he's grown at least a few inches since he was here last – the bushes that knot over the path are harder to push between, long, dead grasses tangling around his feet.

He does manage to reach the back door. This at least shows signs of use, which is a relief. There's a pair of worn brown boots on the ground outside and muddy ground scraped where the door swings outward. The screen door has a rent in one side – is that new, or was it here before?

Fresh firewood is stacked beneath one window though, a sign of life.

To his relief the back door is unlocked and opens on squeaky hinges into the kitchen.

Somehow he expected it to look exactly the same as when he left, cluttered and shabby, with books and papers piled everywhere – the table, the floor along the baseboards.

There are still books, but the rest of the kitchen is in the process of metamorphosis. Wallpaper has been peeled away from the walls in great strips, the wood counters freshly scrubbed, the great white sink catching light from the window. The cabinets show signs of an attempt at repainting – half of them are freshly white. There is a vase of flowers on the windowsill over the sink – clearly her touch.

It smells fresh – like lemon, mingled with the smell of the new paint, like coming spring with the window open. Not what he remembers – the house had always smelled dusty to him, on the cusp of mildew.

It unsettles him more than he thought it would, knowing that things have changed since he left.

He's changed too, but in his mind this place has remained, untouched, during his two years at the academy.

He lets the screen door swing shut behind him, careful not to let it slam. He leaves his suitcase by the back door. Continuing through the kitchen he finds the living room. This room is much as he remembers and he releases a little sigh of relief.

The faded wallpaper is peeling, curtains drawn, the hearth cold, more books piled on disused surfaces. There's a table along one wall, littered with envelopes and more papers, the twin armchairs draped with blankets to hide worn spots, the rug before the hearth where he has fallen asleep more than once on a cold night.

She is asleep on the sofa, one arm thrown over her face, restless beneath an old blue blanket. One bare foot is exposed. She must have fallen asleep doing homework – there are papers scattered on the floor beside the sofa and a book propped open.

Just like she used to do when he lived here, although these days it is just her.

He hesitates.

He doesn't want to wake her, hasn't really considered what he'll say. Maybe he should leave -

She stirs, a gust of fresh, chill air coming through the open window above her.

He clears his throat.

She sits up slowly, blanket falling from her, blinking up at him in confusion. Her hair is short these days – she pushes it back from her face. Taking in the uniform her eyes narrow.

“Roy?”

This almost feels like a scene from a dream until she yawns and says, “What are you doing here?”

“I'm sorry for waking you,” he says. “I knocked -”

She yawns, bracing her hands on her back and stretching. “I didn't figure you would just let yourself in.”

“You didn't answer.”

“I was asleep.”

He doesn't know what to say to that. It's cold in the room with the window open but his face feels warm, his palms damp against his uniform pants.

“So. What are you doing here?”

Two years apart hang heavy in the air as he fumbles with the words he's rehearsed. “I've returned for the last of my training,” he says. “Where's you father?”

Her mouth immediately settles into a frown.

“You're here for him,” she says like an accusation. Now that, that does make him feel guilty, even if it's the truth.

“I need to speak with him,” Roy pleads.

“They all do,” she mutters, straightening her shirt.

“Riza -”

“He's upstairs in bed,” she says, not meeting his eye. “He's not been well.”

There's something in her voice, something she's not saying. He looks at her again but that doesn't help – her expression is guarded.

“Thank you.”

She snorts. “Don't thank me,” she says. “You'll be lucky if he has more than two words to say to you.”

  
  


The funeral is held two days later, on a grey afternoon.

He is surprised she wants it held so soon – surely she has some family that might want to attend, and that would take at least a week to arrange. No, she says, no one else would come. There is no one left.

Her maternal grandfather sends a telegram. That's all.

Roy thinks of his own family in Central and all that they have provided since his parents died years and years ago – his aunt and his sisters, warm and full of laughter, a joyous home where he can always return. This is so different from that.

“I'm fine,” she says, when he asks for the third time if she's okay.

“You don't have to stay long,” he says. “If you want to go home -”

“At least it's not raining,” she says, ignoring him, looking up at the heavy sky.

The sky doesn't look like it will hold out much longer, but he doesn't say as much.

Her father is buried in the graveyard in town. He pays for the whole thing – it's not as though his money is going to better things, and she has none. A few of the local townspeople do attend – more out of support for her, he thinks, than for any sense of loss over her father – the man hadn't exactly been endearing. Several of her teachers, a few classmates, someone he thinks might be a neighbor.

Her fathers last words play on a loop in his head the entire time. _If you promise to use your alchemy with the right intentions, she will let you have it all._

The right intentions? He lingers over this throughout the duration of the funeral. The right intentions? Once he would have said he knew Riza well enough to guess what she might consider _the right intentions_ but now, two years removed from their last prolonged interactions?

She's half a stranger to him now.

He wants - needs - to learn this alchemy. If he can master it, how much better will he be able to serve his country? He thinks of how much safer their borders will be with that power in his hands, how many more people he will be able to protect.

It's not much of an argument, really, but it's a start. 

He watches her through the afternoon, talking politely with the people who have come, looking foreign to him in her formal attire. In the years that he lived here she had always been one for t-shirts and overalls, given to spending as much of her time outside as possible.

He had understood that. Even given all that he had learned under the roof of that house he had hated being cooped up inside it for hours, days on end.

Still, it's strange to realize how much she's changed – two years have made her softer, quieter, in a way that he isn't sure he likes.

The neighbor recognizes him and stops to talk to him as she's leaving.

“Roy, wasn't it?” the woman asks. She's middle aged, older than his aunt, her hair graying. Hearing her voice Roy remembers her, working in the garden out front of her house when they walked into town in the summer.

“Martha,” he says, the name coming back to him.

“You've grown," she says. "You were just a boy last time I saw you."

He smiles at that. He had been almost eighteen when he left so he doesn't know if he really considers that _just a boy_ but perhaps his time away has changed him more than he realized. "

It's kind of you to come back to help her with this.” Her smile is gentle and warm. “It's such a burden on someone so young.”

It's not why he came back, and he has the sense to feel a little ashamed. “I'm happy to help.”

“I wish I could do more for her, but my own family is such a handful -”

“Is there really no one else?” he asks.

The woman shakes her head. “Her father was estranged from whatever family she has – I doubt they even know she's here.”

“I hadn't realized,” he says, because he hadn't.

  
  


That evening, after the funeral, they return to the house.

In the falling dark it seems even more desolate and lonely than it had before and his chest feels tight – how can he possibly just leave her here?

There isn't really extra time to stay – he hadn't expected to stay more than a few days even if her father had offered to teach him flame alchemy himself. He'll take the research notes with him – in the morning, most likely, if she meant what she said about giving them to him. But to leave her here, alone? That seems absolutely criminal. Surely there's someone for her, somewhere for her to go so he doesn't have to feel guilty leaving her here.

She takes them in the back door – dropping her things onto the table. “I'm going to change into something less - “ She just gestures at the blazer and skirt, heading upstairs.

He changes too, into a t-shirt and more comfortable pants. When he returns to the kitchen she's there, sitting at the dining table in an old grey shirt and cotton shorts.

“I'll make some tea,” he says. He doesn't know what else to do – how do you comfort someone you barely know anymore? This at least he knows she likes – he boils the water and measures out tea leaves for both of them into the same old mugs they drank cocoa from in the winters before.

The last rays of sunlight cut through the window over the kitchen sink, catching in the yellow and orange petals of the flowers on the sill. They're beginning to wilt, the green leaves curling up at the ends as they dry.

“Thank you,” she says when he sets the tea before her. It's her favorite - fragrant and floral in the old kitchen, a scent as familiar to him as the pages of old books.

He cooks for her that evening, making what he can with the limited supplies in the old kitchen. Everything is where he remembers it although the memories come haltingly – he reaches for a plate without realizing he knows what cupboard they're in, looks for several minutes in the cupboard next to the stove for a pan before she takes pity on him.

“In the drying rack,” she says.

He blushes a little, retrieving it.

It won't be anything fancy – there isn't much in the kitchen to be had, but does his best. She knows his limits as a cook well enough that she won't be disappointed either way.

“It's been a while since I really had to do any cooking,” he says sheepishly. Still, his hands remember how to use the knife, slicing onion thin and dicing potatoes. “Mostly I just eat at the dining hall.”

“What's it like, at the academy?” she asks, looking down at the mug in her hands. It's empty now but she hasn't let go.

He considers for a long minute before answering, refilling the kettle with water, trying to parse what sort of information she's looking for. “It's not so bad,” he says, which is truth enough. “It's hard work, but I've made some good friends.”

He tells her of his classes – mostly the classes, because she's always been interested in that sort of thing. Alchemy might not be a family trait but she certainly has something of her father's studious nature.

He tells her a little of his classmates – mostly Hughes, because he hasn't made that many friends, honestly. She listens, watching quietly as he moves about the kitchen. Once he's talking he finds it's difficult to stop. She smiles, not quite laughing as he relays some of his funnier stories – somehow Hughes always manages to get the two of them in trouble.

Not that he hasn't gotten himself into plenty of trouble on his own. He leaves out most of that, along with other, more unpleasant things. She's seen more than her fair share of misery for sixteen years, but she hasn't seen much of the world – he can spare her some of that.

He wants to make her laugh.

It has been so long since he talked quite like this, about such trivial things and without worrying what someone will think. She has always been so good at listening - he finds himself wondering why he hadn't tried to call her in the last two years.

“What about you?” he asks, feeling like he's gone on long enough.

She just shrugs, tugging at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt.

“You know what it's like here,” is all she says.

  
  


Over dinner he asks the question that's been weighing on him all day. Not about the research – she's already agreed to give him that. But he needs to know if she will be okay when he leaves.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

She looks up at him, weariness etched in every line of her face and the tilt of her shoulders, the way she braces her elbows on the table.

“I don't know,” she says.

A minute later, “No, I don't really.”

It's what he expected but it still is painful to hear her say it out loud.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

He doesn't ask out of any sense of obligation, not in that moment, but because he's not entirely sure if he'll be able to leave in the morning otherwise.

She brushes him off. “It's not your problem anymore,” she says, getting up from the table.

That he likes even less. As though she was ever a problem.

She takes his dishes and moves to the sink, running the water until it's hot enough.  
“Riza -”

“Do you want to dry them?” she asks.

With a sigh he joins her at the sink.

Side by side they wash the dishes, a ritual they developed years ago. This, this felt easy enough, something resembling normalcy.

Outside it is starting to rain. It patters against the kitchen window, the back door, heavy on the roof. Over this, the rush of water from the sink. Her hands, steady and capable, the light over the sink scattered like sparks over the soap suds.

What would it have been like, if he hadn't left?

More evenings like this, without the backdrop of grief, the two of them living side by side in the house with a ghost.

Her father hadn't been finished with his research when Roy made the decision to leave for the academy, frustrated with being unable to progress beyond mastering the basics of alchemy.

He had offered to assist Master Hawkeye with his research and been refused. “This is my life's work,” he'd said. “I must complete it myself. And now that I know your plans to join the _military_ -” There had been such venom in that word every time it came from his mouth. “- small wonder if I ever share my secrets with you at all.”

Well.

After that, how could he have stayed?

  
  



	2. you're the only light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can you use it?”  
> The thought hadn't occurred to him to worry about that yet. Now it does, and he steps closer, looks closer. Not close enough to touch, certainly, but he kneels, looking up at the tattoo.   
> It's Hawkeye's research, that's for sure. The hand of his master is easily recognizable in the lines of the circle, the tight rows of letters and symbols.

_and my body was bruised and I was set alight_

_but you came over me like some holy rite_

_and although I was burning, you're the only light_

  
  


Only If For a Night – Florence and the Machine

* * *

  
  


The kitchen light cuts a narrow path across the living room from the doorway, flitting over threadbare carpet. The windows pulse faintly with flashes behind the curtains – lightning from the rain that is just barely rolling over them.

“What a night for a storm,” she says. Her voice is soft as a shiver in the dark.

He lights a fire in the hearth, striking through three matches before he manages to get it to catch. This is another ritual from years ago, studying before the fire on chilly evenings. Now that they've left the kitchen she seems tense – maybe this will help her relax.

She doesn't sit so he doesn't either – they stand there awkwardly, facing each other.

“Do you want some more tea?” he asks.

She shakes her head, rubbing at one elbow. “Not – not now.”

“Okay.” He hesitates for a minute then says, “Did I say something? You seem uncomfortable, and I don't want -”

She forces a little smile. That is not what he wanted – the way she is looking at him now is not a way he ever wants her to look at him – there's fear there, and he doesn't know why.

“No, I'm fine.” She takes a deep breath. “You can have his research,” she says. “But -” She stops, chewing over her next words.

She fidgets, tugging at the sleeve of her shirt. Her fingers tremble against her arm.

“You don't have to -” Is that what it is? If she's having second thoughts -

She cuts him off. “My father -” Her voice catches a little on the last word - “didn't record his research by ordinary methods.”

He's prepared for that – most alchemists encode their research in a method of their own choosing – but he's worked under Berthold Hawkeye long enough he expects it won't be impossible to decode.

She takes another deep breath and turns away from him, tugging her shirt up over her shoulders. She sets it aside, draping it over the back of the chair.

The red lines are already visible over the top of her undershirt – it can't possibly be - and as she reaches to remove that too, his breath catches.

This is certainly not what he expected.

Firelight catches on her arms, her shoulders, oh my God _on her back_ , casting the rest of her into shadow.

“My father's research,” she says.

Not some carefully bound, hidden away book, or folders of scribbled notes like he expected. Something portable, impersonal. This – this is a tattoo.

“When?”

The word slips out before he can stop it.

She doesn't turn toward him but her voice is steady when she answers. “After you left,” she says.

And he wonders again, what might be different if he had stayed.

It's healed, he can tell that much. Still – she couldn't have been much older than fifteen at the time – she's only a few months past sixteen now.

“Why didn't you say anything?” he asks, his own voice more unsteady than he likes. “If you had called me -”

What would he have done? It's not like he could have just left the academy, although extenuating circumstances like this might have been enough for temporary leave of some sort.

Her response, when it comes, is one he should have expected. “You were gone,” she says. “How could I call you and say -” She bites off the sentence sharply.

She never was one to part with secrets easily.

There is no sound but the patter of rain on the windows and the crackling of the fire – for a second he wonders if that was a good idea, with the secrets of _flame alchemy_ imprinted on her body in such a way.

A particularly strong gust of wind whistles at the edges of the faltering windows and thunder rumbles, low over the house.

“Can you use it?”

The thought hadn't occurred to him to worry about that yet. Now it does, and he steps closer, looks closer. Not close enough to touch, certainly, but he kneels, looking up at the tattoo.

It's Hawkeye's research, that's for sure. The hand of his master is easily recognizable in the lines of the circle, the tight rows of letters and symbols.

For a second, lost in the alchemy of it all, he forgets to be horrified.

“I should be able to,” he says when his voice returns to him. “But not tonight -” It's far too much for one evening – he won't be able to leave as planned. He can't take this with him.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “If you can use it, then it's yours.”

“Are you sure?”

She takes a deep breath, and beneath the tattoo her lungs expand, skin shifting and now that is all he sees – her back, not the alchemy written over it.

“Roy.” His name is tender as she says it. “Who else could I give this to?”

He is speechless at that, at the level of trust she is placing in him. It had seemed like such a small thing, standing beside her father's grave, for her to agree to pass over his research notes. For a moment the enormity of that decision is overwhelming. What other alchemist could she share this with? The possibility flashes before his eyes, a clinical laboratory, cold and white and sterile -

She shrugs back into her shirt, going back into the kitchen, leaving him there on his knees.

After a few minutes he can hear the kettle boiling.

Then, her bare feet on the carpet.

“Here.” She holds out his mug. His hands shake a little when he takes it but hers are steady now. She sits cross legged on the ground in front of him, her face entirely unreadable over her hands, folded around her own drink. How is it possible that he has known her this long, and yet somehow knows her so little?

“You're fretting,” she says, blowing gently on her tea.

Thunder rumbles again and the whole house creaks, groaning under the force of the wind.

“I-” He has no idea what to say.

“Drink,” she says. “You'll feel better.”

He drinks. It's cocoa, not tea. He does not feel better.

“It's over and done with,” she says, as though sensing the drift of his thoughts. “Getting worked up over it won't undo this.” No need to specify what _this_ is.

She does seem calmer now, as though whatever she was afraid of has passed. And it could have so easily been different, he realizes, if it had not been him – he has known her for the better part of six years and still she had been afraid to stand there, exposing herself in the safety of her own home -

She places her hand on his knee.

“Stop,” she says firmly.

“If I hadn't left -”  
“You didn't do this.”

Not, _this is not your fault_ , or _if you had stayed he might have done it anyway._

“Did you agree to this?”

As though consent for something like this is something that can be given at fifteen, or sixteen. As though her father had any right to ask such a thing of her.  
“If I hadn't, would it have made a difference?”

There is something in that question that makes her sound far older than sixteen and a few months. She was a girl when he left, and returning he finds she has grown up without him.

“My father was sick for months before you came,” she says. And then she talks, telling him of the months she spent tending to him and his refusal to get better, as though he had made up his mind to die with the completion of his work.

Roy has always known her father was obsessive. But the picture she paints goes beyond that, and his heart aches for her. Two years he spent at the academy – it was hard work but there had been good things too, and he had friends to laugh with there.

She has spent two years utterly alone.

So he listens, silently, because this is the price of leaving and never calling. Of leaving and not coming back until he needed something.

The fire dwindles.

She yawns.

“It's been a long day,” he says. God has it ever. She looks spent – her eyes heavy and chin braced in one hand.

“I know,” she says, and even her voice sounds tired.

“You should get some sleep.”

Instead of going upstairs to her room that night, as she has since the day he arrived, she wraps herself in a blanket and stretches out on the sofa. Within minutes she is asleep.

Sleep does not come as easily to him. He lays out blankets on the floor, listening, in the dark, to the movement of the old house and the steady rain. His mind feels full, working to process the events of the day and of the last two hours.

At last, it is the steady sound of her breathing that lulls him to sleep.

  
  


He wakes early, after restless dreams punctuated with periods of wakefulness and the sounds of the storm. The last time he wakes the sky is a little lighter outside the window. It's still raining.

She's still asleep, one knee uncovered, face buried in the cushions.

He lets her rest.

It's a three mile walk into town to the nearest pay phone. He guessed right – the phone at the house is disconnected at present.

He has no choice but to delay his departure. Two weeks is what he manages – in two weeks he has to be in Central for the State Alchemy Exam, so two weeks had better be enough. It won't be – he has to decode the research before he can master it – how can he possibly manage that in such a short span of time?

He won't say anything of these frustrations to Riza. She's bearing enough burdens without his added to them.

He passes an open bakery and stops inside, taking a minute to get out of the rain before he heads back.

“Can I get you anything?” asks the woman behind the counter.

Riza would probably appreciate muffins, he thinks. He has no idea what sort of food is left at the house anyway so it doesn't seem like the worst idea. He deliberates over the display, trying to decide what flavor she would want before he just buys a half dozen.

He ought to know what kind she likes, and it irritates him that he doesn't.

By the time he makes it back to the house he's soaked through, cold all the way to the bone, boots thick with mud. She's awake now, sitting in the kitchen in a heavy red sweater and her shorts when he comes in the back door.

“I wondered where you went,” she says.

“I needed to use the phone,” he says. He hangs his coat on the back of the chair and pushes wet hair back from his face.

“Well you left all your things here, so I didn't figure you'd gone far.”

She pours him a cup of coffee and that warms his hands – he takes a sip and it's not quite scalding, blazing down through him like a line of fire.

It's not even ten, thin grey light seeping though the room. He hands her the bag of muffins.

“I wasn't sure what kind you'd like,” he admits.

She picks the blueberry one. He files that information away, as though he might ever have a reason to use it later.

This whole situation feels surreal after the night before – looking at her, perched on the chair in her sweater and shorts he would never have guessed at her secret. She's working over a crossword puzzle, end of her pencil in her mouth as though nothing is different.

For her, it isn't really, he realizes. It feels like a revelation to him but she's carried this with her for months now.

It must have taken hours – and hours. He feels sick thinking about it.

She drags him from his thoughts with a question. “Two words, tabletop mineral.”

The crossword puzzle, he realizes. “How many letters?” he asks.

She takes a sip of her own coffee before responding. “Fourteen. Second letter O.”

He leans over her shoulder to look at her paper and she taps the line with her thumb. Her fingers are slightly smudged from the newsprint and the pencil, her hair falling forward over her eyes as she looks down at the crossword.

“No other letters for that one?” he asks.

She turns to look at him, her face unexpectedly close - he sits suddenly back in his chair.

“Not so far,” she says.

He picks up his coffee once more. The mug is a balm in his icy hands. “Ask again when you have more letters.”

She rolls her eyes. “When I have more letters I'll get it myself, thanks.”

  
  


Noon finds them in the living room, rain drumming on the roof and sheeting down the windows.

She pulls off her t-shirt – it's much less of an ordeal now - and lays on her stomach in front of the fireplace, propping open a book in front of her, the crossword beside it.

“Can you see well enough?” she asks. Such a practical question, so matter-of-fact. He's still not used to that.

He nods, silent. In the grey afternoon light the lines look softer against her skin, slightly raised as though he could feel them with his fingers. He doesn't.

“Are you comfortable?” he asks, more than once.

“Quit asking that or I'm taking it back,” she says after the fourth time.

He is so careful not to touch her.

With her permission he copies what parts of the array he can onto sheets of paper – hopefully that will be easier to study from than her back – easier for her, at least.

“Alchemical symbol, chalice. Third letter T.”

“Water,” he answers without looking up.

She marks it down on her paper, shifting a little and bending her knees, crossing her feet in the air.

“Is it all alchemy related?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “This one is 'a type of fermented bread', nine letters.”

He looks up at her, rolling his pencil in his fingers. “Sourdough,” he says after a minute.

“That was easy, I already got that one.”

After several hours he has enough to work with for the time being – it's going to take days to decode, if he's able to manage it at all. He could have kept working into the night but she is far too restless for that, bored of her book and lying on the floor for so long.

Lunch is sandwiches, with cheese and tomatoes and onion. She offers him pickles from a jar.

They're crisp and bright in his mouth.

“Canned them myself, last summer,” she says.

While he arduously works out how to decode the formulae for each section of the array she finishes painting the kitchen cabinets, polishes and the reattaches all the brass knobs. She is halfway down one wall, stripping away the old, peeling wallpaper in the living room when he gives up on his research and takes a break to help.

The physical work is thoughtless and his brain turns over the research notes looking for patterns, sifting through them with each satisfying peel of wallpaper that comes down in his hands.

  
  


  
  


Outside, the land is coming to life with all this rain. The bushes around the house puts on a new green mantle, daffodils and tulips and hyacinth pushing through the brush. It makes for quiet days spent indoors, settling into a comfortable rhythm of passing the days.

“Don't you need to go back to school?” he asks.

“I haven't been going,” she says. “Since father got sick. I've been doing my schoolwork here.”

They sleep every night sprawled on the thick rug in the living room, and each morning she lets him copy more of her father's research from her skin. While he works his way slowly through his notes she works on the house, cleaning and fixing as she moves through each of the rooms. The living room, where he's working, she leaves mostly untouched for the time being.

In the evenings they cook together, moving around each other in the kitchen in a way that feels half remembered, like a dance to a song you no longer have words for.

  
  


  
  


It is five days into this pattern that they receive a visitor. Riza is upstairs, sorting through some boxes of old clothes in one of the spare rooms and he is seated on the living room floor with notes spread out around him, pencil in his mouth -

There's a knock at the door, sharp and businesslike.

A neighbor, he assumes. Maybe Martha, checking to make sure Riza is still doing okay.

He unlocks the front door and answers.

It's a man, in a grey suit carrying a briefcase. Roy is suddenly conscious that he is wearing the same t-shirt he's been wearing all week.

“Can I help you?” he asks, wiping his hands against his pants.

“I have a letter for Master Hawkeye,” the man says. His voice is clipped and terse – he's from Central, Roy guesses, because no one in town could have ever fit this description. A lawyer?

The man passes him a plain grey envelope and leaves, his shoes thumping on the boards of the old porch. The envelope seems unremarkable to him – addressed to Berthold Hawkeye in a tidy script.

When Roy turns he finds Riza has come halfway down the stairs.

“Why did you answer it?” she demands. She looks more upset than she had the day her father died, white as a sheet, eyes tight with anger – or something else, it's hard to say.

Fear?

“What is it?” he asks.

She just storms down the rest of the stairs and snatches the envelope from him, tossing it down on the table – alongside dozens of others much like it. The door is still standing wide open – cool spring air gusts in, rustling his papers on the floor.

“Riza -” He reaches out to grab her shoulder but she shrugs him off.

In the bright afternoon sunlight that streams through the open door, she starts to cry.

That he was not expecting. She hadn't even cried at the funeral.

She slams the front door shut, shaking loose a few flakes of paint. She sits and puts her back to it, arms on her knees as though bracing herself. In the absence of light she is exhausted and spent.

“What's going on?”

It is a long, long minute before she answers, wiping at her cheeks. She leaves a smudge of dirt across one. “You know there's no money,” she says, voice hollow.

“I know,” he says.

“They've been coming for months now. Bills that haven't been paid – I don't have the means to pay them, and Father was sick so he couldn't – wouldn't -” Her voice breaks and she says no more.

This time it's not only anger at her father that he feels welling up, but more guilt -

“Is there anything I can do?”

She ignores him, getting to her feet, wiping at her cheeks again.

“I should start on dinner,” she says.

He follows her into the kitchen, half a step behind her. He stands there, feeling useless while she moves about, gathering a knife and a cutting board. Setting these out on the counter she begins dicing an onion.

Her hands only shake a little, but as his eyes begin to water he wonders if she started with the onion on purpose.

He moves to help.

“Don't,” she snaps, pointing at him with the knife.

So he sits at the table instead. Sunlight is pouring into the kitchen through the window over the sink, spilling across the tile floor. It is the first day it has not rained since his arrival. The afternoon sun lights on the back of her neck, on her shoulders as she stands at the counter, golden in her hair. Her face is a shadow.

He has spent long hours in this kitchen, long hours seated at this table – not just in the last week, but in his lifetime. His fingers remember the grooves in the wood, scars from years and years of use. Her crossword is there, on the table in front of him, half finished, empty mugs from that morning alongside it.

There are books stacked on the table, up against the wall. Old ones, mostly, things her father had rejected for his research, or unrelated to alchemy at all.

He picks up a book from the stack, running a finger over the worn cover and the spine, with its gold stamped letters. He flips it open and the spine creaks, slowly turning the title page, blowing past the table of contents.

He looks back at the stack. There are at least three others here in the piles on the table and as he glances down at the floor – several stacks of books there as well.

“Riza?”

She doesn't look up at him but she pauses, bracing one herself on the countertop.

“What?” Her voice is as sharp as the knife in her hand.

“Your father's alchemy books. They're worth something, at least.”

Very slowly she sets down the knife, looking up at him.

  
  



	3. home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stand back,” he says. The last thing he wants is for this to go wrong somehow, for her to get hurt. “I don't want to burn down the house,” he says.   
> She shrugs. “Wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened to it. Just – be careful.”

  
  


_echoes of a city that's long overgrown_

_your heart is the only place that I call home_

_can I be returned?_

  
  


Heartlines – Florence and the Machine

* * *

  
  


He wakes early the next morning – is this some kind of curse he picked up at the academy, the inability to sleep in even when the opportunity is there? The living room is still grey with dawn and he's still tired, but even lying there with his eyes closed he can't manage to go back to sleep.

Riza is asleep on the floor nearby, face down in her pillow with one arm over her head, blankets half kicked off. She always did sleep restlessly.

Over the collar of her t-shirt he can see just the edge of the array, over the ridge of her spine.

He's spent hours staring at it in the last week – mostly on the sketches he's made but more than once he's had to return to the original and he swears by this point he has also memorized every freckle on her back and shoulders.

She stirs, sighing heavily as she turns to her side.

He doesn't want to wake her. Quietly he gets to his feet, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders. He goes to the kitchen, starting coffee to brew. He waits for it, listening to the quiet hissing and staring out the window over the sink. It has only been a week since he arrived but this feels comfortable, like putting on an old, favorite sweater you forgot you owned.

It's foggy this morning, the house wrapped in a shroud. He can't make out much of the field behind the house, let alone the treeline at the far edge, where she had taken him out to catch fireflies, and pick berries and more than once, in the heat of the summer, to go swimming in the creek.

It's profoundly peaceful this early, everything undisturbed, the world still half asleep.

He pours the coffee and sits at the table, watching it steam. The air is chilly and damp and he wishes he had thought to bring a sweater. Not that he could have anticipated being here long enough to need one.

Being here feels more like coming home than he expected it would.

It's different than the academy, or his home in Central – not that he's seen that recently either. He has such vivid memories though, of bright, cozy rooms, his aunt's booming laugh and his sisters, talking incessantly. That is a kind of peace too, but there's something about the isolation and the quiet out here that appeals to him after months in the dorms.

He's not sure how long he sits there studying his notes before he hears her moving about in the other room.

She appears in the doorway minutes later. “Good morning,” she says, yawning. She's wearing her red sweater again, face flushed along one side where she's lain on it, the weave imprinted on her skin.

“Good morning.”

“How long have you been up?” Even her voice sounds sleepy. She yawns again.

“A while.” He hasn't been keeping track.

“And still in your pajamas. Didn't they teach you anything at the academy?”

He smiles. “Hardly.”

She sits in the chair opposite him, drawing her knees up to her chest, watching him.

“I made coffee,” he says. “If you want some.”

“Maybe in a bit.”

He flips through several pages of notes, consulting with the book he has flat on the table.

“Have you broken his code yet?”

“I think I'm close,” Roy says. Her father had destroyed anything of note in his study, but his hand is clear in the method of recording – and Roy spent several years studying with him.

“You'll get it.”

Her belief in him is stronger than his own.

After a few minutes she gets up, putting away the dishes from the night before. She fries eggs in a pan on the stove, slicing bread to dip in the yolks. She's quiet, but the silence between them doesn't feel awkward or stiff in the way that it had that first day.

It must be an adjustment for her, having someone else here in the house. Someone to talk to, and eat with, who takes up space instead of just hiding away.

She sets a full plate on the table for each of them and sits back down.

“Thank you,” he says.

She nibbles at a piece of the bread, picking up her crossword. She's been working on it all week – most of the squares are filled in at this point, except for a block in the bottom right corner.

“Known for their wool exports, nine letters.”

“Do I get any letters?”  
“Last letter L, third letter S.”

He puts down his pencil, mulling over the question.

She gets it first. “Resembool,” she says, marking it down.

“It's in the south east,” he says. He knows the name of the town, even if he hadn't known they exported wool. “How many more words do you need?”

She counts. “Thirteen left.”

He spends the next three hours of poring over her father's research, papers spread between the two of them on the kitchen table and several cups of tea between them. She's reading her book – she tips it up against her empty mug and he tries to read the title on the spine but he can't see enough of it.

He could just ask. He doesn't.

The fog dissipates outside in the warming sun and they prop the back door open to get a bit of a breeze. The fresh air brings a little more life to the house, chasing cobwebs from corners and pushing back the shadows.

“It's nice having you here,” she says.

Her words catch him off guard. “I'm not very good company,” he says after a moment. “I'm sure this is terribly boring for you.”

She kicks him under the table. “I mean it,” she says. “I wish you didn't have to leave so soon.”

“I know.”

He wants to say _I missed this_ but the truth is he had forgotten what it felt like, the quiet peace between the two of them. It feels like too much of a lie to say out loud.

“It's nice to be back,” he says instead, looking up.

She's actually looking at him, for once, and their eyes meet, just for a second.

“I need to go for groceries,” she says, dropping her gaze and clearing her throat, cheeks flushing.

“Today?”

“Before dinner.”

There's a long silence.

“I'll go with you,” he offers. “We can take some of the books, if you want.” There is a bookstore in town – how many hours and how much of his pocket money had he spent there growing up? He's certain the owner will be interested in at least some of these ones.

“I don't want to distract you from your work,” she says. “I know this is important.”

“It's fine,” he says. “A break will be good. Besides, those books are heavy – I couldn't let you carry them all on your own.”

“You'll have to pick which ones,” she says. “I don't know how to tell what's valuable.”

Roy, who knows Berthold Hawkeye's books possibly better than the names of his own sisters, has no trouble at all choosing some of the rarer ones to carry with them into town.

Their bags are heavy with books when they leave the house. The three mile walk is much more pleasant this time, with the sun shining thinly, the sky clear and Riza along with him. It's warm, the ditches along the road green and noisy with ducks where the rainwater has collected.

It's really starting to feel like spring.

Nine days until he has to leave. It still doesn't feel like enough although this time when the thought crosses his mind, it's not the alchemy he thinks of.

  
  


  
  


Things go well at the bookstore.

Some of the titles Riza's has are rare, and the man at the store leaps at the chance to claim a copy. Roy at least has some idea of the value – he makes sure she gets as fair a price as he can. It's not a lot of money, but it's more than she had to work with before, and there are plenty more books.

“We'll be back with more,” he says. “If you're interested.”

The proprietor assures them that yes, he's interested, very much so.

On the return back, bags filled with groceries instead, they feel lighter.

  
  


  
  


After their trip into town and their success at the bookstore, it is as though a weight has been lifted from her.

She laughs, _oh my God does she laugh_ , teasing him that evening when he burns his fingers on the pan trying to cook grilled cheese, when the plate he's washing slips from his grip, when he smudges pencil across his cheek. It's such a wonderful sound after so much quiet – he could listen to her laugh all day.

She peels the crust off her grilled cheese and eats that first, dipping it in her soup, something she has done as long as he has known her.

“Do you really think you'll be in the military the rest of your life?” she asks.

“What else would I do?”

Go back to Central, work at the bar? Teach alchemy like her father had? He's not patient enough for that and he wants to do more, to improve the world around him.  
“You could travel,” she says. “Learn more about alchemy. See more of the world and help people at the same time.”

“Hopefully,” he says, “with the military I will be able to do both of those things. If I pass the exam to become a state alchemist, I'll have funding for research as well as being able to travel the country, helping to keep it safe.”

She smiles. “That doesn't sound too bad. I've never been anywhere outside of town.”

“Really?”

“I mean, when I was really little my family went places, but I barely remember any of it.”

And after her mother died they had gone nowhere at all, her father becoming more and more obsessed with his research.

“Have you given any more thought to what you're going to do now?” he asks.

She considers him from over the rim of her glass. “Some,” she says after a moment. “But it's not like I've made any decisions.”

  
  


  
  


It is that evening, after dinner, that he manages to unravel the last of the encryption. It's not a loud moment of celebration when it happens. He simply sets aside his notebook and looks up at her, grinning.

“Good news?” she asks.

“I've finally broken the code.”

She grins in response. “I told you you would. Are you ready to try it?”

He hesitates. He's fairly confident he has the formula right but there's a chance he made some error and flame alchemy seems like the sort of thing he really does not want to make an _error_ with.

“I think – I think I should double check before I try it,” he says. “I want to make sure I didn't write something down wrong.”

She nods solemnly, as though picking up on his train of thought. “Of course.”

This time she pulls her shirt up over her shoulders beneath the wavering kitchen light, sitting backwards in the kitchen chair. It's quiet, nothing but the rustle of papers as he flips through his notes, the hum of the kitchen light and the groaning of the refrigerator.

She rolls her shoulder. “That tickles,” she says.

“What?” He is so absorbed in the alchemy, double checking his drawings against the real thing - he has no idea what she's talking about.

“You're breathing too much, it tickles.”

He coughs. “Sorry,” he says, trying to keep a straight face. “I'll stop.”

She frowns over her shoulder at him. “You're teasing me.”

“What, is that not allowed?”

“For your sake, Roy Mustang, I hope the next time you find a girl half naked in front of you your first instinct isn't to make a joke.”

He blushes, grateful she can't see his face.

“I think I'm ready,” he says quickly, straightening.

“About time!”

She pulls her sweater on over her t-shirt, tugging on the brown boots by the back door and then they go out into the yard. Fog has rolled in again from across the field and standing in the dark it clings in the folds of their clothes.

“It's a good night for it,” she observes. “There's no wind. And everything is so damp from all the rain I don't think you're at any risk of setting the field on fire.”

That eases some of his tension. He's nervous – the same way he was every time he tried something new. Nervous with a little thrill of excitement. This is easily the most advanced alchemy he's attempted.

“I'm going to start small,” he says, setting out a crumpled piece of paper on the cracked paving stones of the patio behind the house. He's worked out the basics of the formula, as best as he can tell – there's plenty more to sort out now that he can translate it properly, but he needs to know if it works first. This first transmutation is critical.

She watches his preparations, a look of mild apprehension on her face.

“Stand back,” he says. The last thing he wants is for this to go wrong somehow, for her to get hurt. “I don't want to burn down the house,” he says.

She shrugs. “Wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened to it. Just – be careful.” There's something in her voice on those last words, something shaky but her face is impassive.

He uses an old lighter unearthed from one of the kitchen drawers – he'll have to come up with a more elegant solution than that eventually, but for this night it will work just fine, the flint striking a spark. He's drawn out the transmutation circle on a piece of paper – he's drawn it so many times now it's permanently etched in his mind.

He steadies himself, bracing one knee on the stone, running through the process in his head once more.

He sparks the lighter and places his hands on the circle.

There's a crackle, a moment of fire branching out like lightning through the air -

The paper vanishes in a blaze flaring brightly against the dark, leaving nothing but ash and blackened scorch marks on the paving stones.

“It worked!” He's grinning like an idiot. He looks over his shoulder at Riza, expecting her excitement to mirror his own.

It doesn't. She looks terrified instead - she's taken several steps back and her eyes are wide in her face, mouth a tight line.

“Oh -”

He hadn't considered that she must have seen this in use before – her father had invented it, after all. He has no idea under what circumstances that might have been.

He leaves the circle and the lighter and wraps his arms tightly around her. She's trembling.

She buries her face in his chest and sobs, clutching tightly at his shirt. With his hand on her back he can feel her shaking. This is the closest he's come to touching her tattoo – the thick fabric of her sweater between his palm and the alchemy.

“I'm sorry,” he murmurs. If only he had taken the time to think this through, more, to consider how she might feel, more. He has made too much of a habit of assuming, where Riza Hawkeye is concerned. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“I know.” Her voice is so small, muffled by the fabric of his shirt.

They stand like that for a long minute until her breathing evens and her shoulders relax, fingers unclenching.

“I'm sorry,” he says again, letting his hands fall back to his sides.

“It's fine,” she says – not that he believes her. At least her breathing is steadier now, her eyes calmer. “I should have expected – well, I'm glad you were able to make it work.”

There's that, at least. He won't be going back to Central empty handed after all.

“Me too,” he says. She's got her arms crossed across her chest now, closing herself off in a way that makes him feel useless, his hands inert at his sides.

The kitchen light is still on, spilling out the open door by the patio across damp grass and broken old stones.

“Don't you want to try again?”

Her question catches him by surprise. Ridiculous of her to ask that - but so very like her. After years of putting her father's wishes before her own it must be second nature but that is not a habit he wants her to start making with him.

“Not tonight.," he says firmly. "There will be plenty of time for that tomorrow, or the rest of the week.”

Her expression is skeptical but she doesn't push the issue.

“Let's go inside,” he says.

Inside, where there is light and he makes chamomile tea that helps to calm both of them, soothing frayed nerves.

  
  


  
  


He is lying in a patch of sunlight on the living room floor the next afternoon when the answer comes to him.

“Sodium chloride,” he says suddenly, sitting up. The alchemy notes lie scattered around him, halfway decoded, forgotten for the moment.

“What?” she asks, not looking up from her book. She's been quiet all day – quieter than usual, that is.

“Your crossword puzzle.”

“Oh?”

“Tabletop mineral. Salt. Sodium chloride, fourteen letters.”

“I know,” she says, pursing her lips as though trying not to smile. “I got it days ago.”

“Oh.” He tries to keep the disappoint from his voice.

“Don't look so bummed out. I finished the whole thing, I couldn't just leave that one blank.”

Oh.

She gets up from the sofa and goes out onto the front porch, returning with a folded newspaper. “There's a new one, if you want to help me with it.”

She sits back down and flips through the paper, pulling out the page with the crossword puzzle. He joins her on the sofa and she hands him the extra pages of the paper.

He glances briefly at the headline before setting it aside. “REBELLION IN THE EAST.”

“Let me see,” he says, leaning in.

She holds the paper out away from him, laughing. “Hang on I want to look first!”

They settle for holding the newspaper between them, shoulder to shoulder.

Riza taps the page with her pencil. “Oh, six down, that has to be -”

“Equation, I know.”

She looks at him skeptically. “I was going to say, “Question.”

“Something that has an answer,” he says. “Alchemical equation.”

“Not everything is about alchemy, Roy.” She runs her finger down the column of clues. “Here, six across is 'a perfect example', fourteen letters.”

“I don't have any guesses for that,” he says.

“Me either. We'll have to fill in more of it first.”

There's such a look of concentration on her face as she reads through the clues, filling in eighteen across, 'tedious', and twenty-three down, 'palisade'. Her handwriting is tidy and precise. No, there are plenty of things in this world that aren't about alchemy.

Riza, quintessentially.

  
  


  
  


More days pass. There are two days left before he leaves for Central and he's decoded and memorized most of her father's research. There will be no notes to take with him – she's adamant about that, and he agrees. This brand of alchemy is powerful, dangerous, best not left lying around for anyone else to uncover.

The more time he spends with it – with her, too – the less he can fathom how her father devoted his entire life to the development of this technique. What power does fire have but to destroy? Clearly it has done its damage where Riza is concerned, and Berthold Hawkeye was so consumed by his pursuit of it that it ruined his life as well.

He vows it will be different for him. Fire has the power to transform, to cleanse, to provide light in the dark. He will not let it become nothing but a tool for destruction in his hands.

  
  


  
  


They're lying on the rug in the living room. In the dark, with the fire mostly extinguished, he can barely make out the profile of her face, resting on her folded hands.

“Thank you,” she says. Her voice breaks the quiet of the house.

“For what?”

“You didn't have to stay,” she says.

He wants to say that he stayed because of her, but that is only such a small part of it – still it's about her father's research. He's ashamed to admit that out loud, so he doesn't say anything.

“I didn't really think you'd come back, you know,” she says.

“I told you I would,” he says. He knew, even when he left, that he would have to return someday if he had any hope of learning flame alchemy. Like a moth to flame, unable to resist the lure of the light.

“Doesn't mean I believed it.”

That is painful, like the slip of a knife between ribs. He wants to be someone she can believe – she's certainly demonstrated her faith in him often enough the last two weeks.

“I kept my word.”

“My father said that his research would bring you back. I didn't believe him either.”

“I-”

He freezes. Had her father preserved his research this way so that Roy would feel beholden to his daughter, so that after his death, Roy would have to spend these long hours at her side, giving her the key to the one thing Roy wanted most in the world?

It's twisted and cruel and wholly unnecessary – he could have simply asked, Roy would have -

He would have left the night after the funeral, and taken the research with him, if he could have. The truth of it is bitter and sharp in his mouth.

If she has any idea that he's thinking this she doesn't let on. “What will happen after you pass the exam?” she asks instead.

He appreciates that she takes for granted that he will pass – he's not so certain of it as she sounds.

“Eventually, I expect I'll be sent to the south east to help support our troops at the border,” he says. He and Hughes have discussed that possibility – eventuality, really – but they don't talk about it in anything but practical terms. “I don't think there's much more I can do to prepare myself for it.”

“Are you scared?”

He wants to say no, that that is why he enlisted and he's ready for it. This was his choice. It's what he would say to someone else. When she asks, his answer is a little different.

Of course he's scared.

“Yes,” he says. She deserves at least that much of the truth. The conflict in the east has been going on for some time now and nothing he has heard has been any sort of reassurance.

Her voice is quiet in the dark, her body restless as she turns over, adjusts her blanket, folds her hands over her chest.

“Me too,” she says. “Me too.”


	4. some things you let go

_can people just untie themselves_

_uncurling like flowers_

_if you could just forgive yourself_

  
  


Various Storms and Saints – Florence and the Machine

* * *

  
  


The afternoon before his departure, it is finished.

He has learned as much as he can in the time that's been given to them. Flame alchemy is simple in conception, if not in execution, and years of her father's research, refined and honed, have done much to speed that process along. He scribes out the transmutation circle again, the one thing he will take with him, stacks the rest of his notes together, puts away the books he has been using to help translate.

They cook dinner together for the last time. Onions and tomatoes and peppers, simmered together over pasta. Nothing fancy, but neither are they. It smells delicious, or maybe he appreciates it more this time because tomorrow evening he'll be eating a cold sandwich on a train.

Rain batters at the kitchen window, thick sheets of it coming down over the yard same as it has been all day.

“I'm surprised the roof doesn't leak,” he observes, watching water coursing over the stones of the patio, running in rivers through the muddy grass.

“It did last spring,” she says, stirring the vegetables on the stove. “But father was still working then, so it got fixed.”

He half expected her to say she had fixed it herself.

“He actually paid someone to come out and fix it?” Roy asks. That seems unlike him – he hadn't liked to spend money, partly because he didn't have any. A leaky roof would not have seemed so inconvenient to Berthold Hawkeye, unless it was in his study.

“No,” she says. “He climbed onto the roof himself and used alchemy to fix it.”

That seems even more unlikely. Roy tries to picture his old mentor climbing so much as a ladder, let alone across the roof of the old house.

“I'd have paid money to see that,” he says.

Riza grins.

“I think it's just about done,” she says, tasting one of the noodles cooking on the stove.

She strains the pasta in the sink and he sets out bowls for the two of them.

“It will take some refinement, I think,” he says over dinner, scraping the last of the sauce from his bowl with a crust of bread. “But I've grasped the concept – I just need practice.”

He isn't quite sure what to make of the expression on her face – relief mingled with something else. If he had paid more attention would he be able to tell? He likes to think he's gotten better at reading her in the last two weeks but she's still not easy to decipher.

“I'm just glad it wasn't for nothing,” she says.

“Me too.”

If he hadn't been able to decode her father's research -

He was not the one who chose a tattoo as a method of preservation, he reminds himself. If that effort had been in vain it would not be his fault.

They clean up the kitchen, piling up dishes and letting the hot water run until the sink is full of suds. She rolls back the sleeves of her sweater to keep them from getting wet. Two weeks they have been doing this now – they've fallen back into old patterns. Wash, rinse, dry. It's such an ordinary, normal thing to do.

So much of life is, after all, made up of the every day rituals of living.

It happens quickly.

The dish slips from her hands, slick with soapy water, and they both reach to catch it, crashing together – her hip hits against the counter top and his knee collides with the cupboard beneath the sink. The plate hits the floor and cracks into rough thirds.

“Sorry,” he says.

“I was the one who dropped it,” she says, cheeks red. “It's not a big deal.” She picks up the pieces and moves to throw them away.

“Don't! Let me fix it.”

She fixes him with a bemused smile. “It's really not necessary.”

“Please.”

He draws out the circle on a piece of paper unfolded on the kitchen table. Flame alchemy is new to him but basics like this he could do in his sleep, having studied them so intensely under her father. In the center of the circle he gently places the broken pieces of the plate.

Within seconds it is made whole once more, nothing remaining to indicate the break had ever happened. A pity that people aren't as easy to mend.

“Good as new.”

She rolls her eyes and goes back to the sink where the rest of the dishes are still waiting.

“Let me finish them,” he says.

“That's ridiculous.”

“Don't need you breaking any more plates.”

She glares at him. “I would have caught it if you hadn't gotten in the way.”

“Of course.”

“If that's how you're going to be, then fine.” She jumps up to sit on the counter next to the sink. “You do the rest.”

It's not as though there's much left to clean anyway. He resumes their task, scrubbing the last two pans.

“My aunt was always very particular about how I washed dishes,” he says. “She'd make me wash them twice if I didn't do a good enough job.”

“I bet that happened a lot.”

He laughs. “At first, sure.” He had hated it, at the time. But he had quickly learned to do something right the first time, and not cut corners. And - “She told me a man had no business going out into the world without knowing how to take care of himself.”

 _Don't expect some woman to come along and do all those things for you_ , she'd told him, more than once.   
“My father didn't teach me how to do much of anything,” she says.

No, the only things her father had truly known how to do he had taught to Roy, and not his own daughter.

She rubs absently at her hip, lips pursed as though lost in thought.  
“Are you okay?”

“What?” She almost looks surprised to see him still there. “Oh, yes, fine,” she says. “Just bruised my hip.”

His knee feels stiff from where he smacked it against the wooden cupboard. He drains the sink, wrings out the sponge, dries his hands.

“It's just -”

She raises one eyebrow. “It's just what?”  
He shrugs, stacking the last clean dish in the drying rack. “You looked like you were thinking about something, that's all.”

“So what if I was? Do I have to share everything with you?”

“No, of course not - “ He realizes, belatedly, that she's teasing him.

Still, she has shared more of herself with him than he has a right to. “Only if you'd like to,” he says.

  
  


  
  


The rain has mostly stopped, just a slow trickle from the gutters, the clouds in the sky stretching like gauze over a full moon.

Time to destroy the evidence.

They gather up all the notes he's made and carry them out into the yard, where there's an old fire ring, piled high with all the branches and leaves, dead grass and brush she cleaned from the yard in the last two weeks.

Everything is soaked except for the papers they carry, all the fruits of his labor from the last two weeks. He feels a pang at the thought of losing them, but it's silly really. He doesn't need these notes to perform the alchemy.

This time they're better prepared for it. She stands her ground, boots muddy in the damp grass when he strikes the lighter and activates the array.

It is less explosive this time, just a sudden sparking and the papers among the brush catch fire. It hisses against the damp, thick smoke pouring forth until after several minutes, the leaves and branches are dry enough to catch.

She coughs, moving out of the path of the smoke as a breeze catches it.

“That wasn't so bad,” she says.

He laughs a little. “I'm not an expert yet.”

He has a lot of work to do before he reaches that point.

Together they stand and watch it burn. The flames limn everything in gold – her face, her shoulders, the backs of his hands, the long grasses tramped beneath their feet. Fire is beautiful like this, sparks floating upward beneath the trees. The flames warm his cheeks, his chest, warding against the cool spring night as it washes over them.

“It's going to be so quiet around here,” she says.

It's the closest they've come to discussing the fact that he has to leave in the morning.

Don't stay here then, he wants to say, but he doesn't know what to suggest instead, so he doesn't say it.

“It's always been quiet here,” he says instead.

She laughs. “You're not wrong.”

It feels good to make her laugh like that.

“I would stay longer if I could.”

“I know.”

At last the fire is nothing but ashes, a wisp of smoke coiling slowly upward. This feels like an ending more than a beginning, in more ways than one.

Without the warmth of the fire the night is chilly and she shivers, drawing her sweater tighter around her shoulders. Goosebumps raise on his arms.

“I'm going in,” she says. “Do you want some tea?”

“Sure.”

She lingers in the doorway, silhouetted against the kitchen light. “Are you coming?”

He nods. “Yeah, just a minute.”

“Suit yourself.” She lets the screen door slam, the sound a loud crack in the night.

With her gone and the fire extinguished the yard feels empty, silence settling over everything like fog. The moon is full overhead, the house bone white beneath it, almost like a skeleton crouched in the brush. There is nothing left living here anymore – it is a place of ghosts.

Except – after a minute he hears her moving in the house, the clatter of dishes as she puts them away. The thin whistle of the tea kettle on the stove.

  
  


  
  


Six comes early.

Still half asleep she makes coffee while he packs his things – there are not many of them to pack. He takes nothing he did not bring with him except a folded piece of paper with the flame alchemy circle inscribed upon it.

The house already feels emptier, quieter, draftier. The kitchen is washed in grey dawn light, the kettle on the stove quiet, sink empty of dishes as though no one is living here anymore.

They drink their coffee in silence. The weight of his departure is heavy in the air, pressing back the words on his tongue. What does he want to say? I'm sorry I'm leaving? I'll miss you?

She says nothing either.

  
  


  
  


She borrows the neighbors car to drive him to the train station.

In the early morning light he loads his suitcase into the back end alongside two more cases of alchemy books they boxed up the night before. The sky overhead is clear, the air loamy and heavy after all the rain the day before.

Before they leave he looks back at the old house. Curtains flutter in the upstairs windows, the exterior paint peeling and faded.

This is the last time he'll ever see it – he can feel that deep in his bones. She'll sell the house probably, and even if she doesn't, he has no idea what his future might hold – he doubts it will allow him to come back here. He watches her check the lock on the front door, slip the key into her pocket, as though closing a door behind the two of them that they can never unlock.

“Are you ready?” she asks.   
As ready as he will ever be. He nods.

She is wearing an old dress of her mothers, found in the attic. It's dark red – the color looks nice on her. It's strange to see her wearing something so feminine especially after the last two weeks. Her boots are the same though – brown leather caked with mud from the driveway.

In the past, when her father had still owned a car, Roy had driven them into town and then past it, out into countryside where wild blueberries grew thick and prickly. Hours they had spent, the better part of the day sweating under the summer sun and picking baskets of berries.

They had both been sunburned to a crisp, afterward. But the jam had been worth it, so many jars of it, sweet with the taste of summer.

This is the first time she has driven him anywhere. Her fingers are tight on the steering wheel, his hands curled in his lap. Tall grasses line the ditches along the road, the fields bright green with all the rain of the last weeks. He focuses out the window instead of looking at her.

It feels difficult to break the silence, in a way that it hadn't the night before. Something about his inevitable departure – only four hours from now – has built back up a wall between them.

  
  


  
  


They come away from the bookstore a second time with an empty box in Roy's arms and a heavier purse in Riza's bag, life in her step as they walk down the sidewalk. The ground is thick with mud after so much rain, squelching around his boots every time they have to cross the street.

They stow the empty boxes in the car and he retrieves his suitcase. The train station is only a few blocks away and he's planning to take the twelve o'clock train.

They eat breakfast at a local cafe, sipping cold lemonade in the warming sun. It's going to be a clear day and the breeze is warm and fresh the way it always is after a good rain.

“Of course,” he grumbles. “One of the only nice days in weeks and I have to spend it on a train.”

“Don't mope,” she says. “I would much rather spend my day traveling someplace new.”

Instead, she'll leave him at the train station and go back to an empty, haunted house.

Don't think about that.

The bells toll eleven and they both freeze.

They don't get up from the table immediately, but the conversation falters, and after a few minutes they're left picking at the remnants of their food.

“Time to go,” she says, meeting his eyes with a sad smile. She's better at facing things head on like that – he isn't sure he could have done it.

He leaves money on the table and takes up his suitcase. There's nothing else to wait for.

It's a short walk to the train station and when they arrive there's a line to buy his ticket, halfway across the platform. It's good they arrived as early as they did.

“I'll wait here,” Riza says, taking a seat on a bench.

It takes nearly twenty minutes to make it to the front of the line. At first he keeps looking over his shoulder at her until he turns his head and his neck protests.

“Don't be stupid,” he tells himself firmly.

Instead, he switches to checking the watch on his wrist every few minutes. The time slips by slowly.

He purchases his ticket at last and returns to where she waits – of course - watching people pass back and forth on the platform.

“All set?” she asks, looking up at him.

He nods. He sits on the bench next to her, rests his suitcase on his lap.

He wants to apologize for leaving, but the words taste false on his tongue. He's gotten what he came here for, even if he also regrets what he has to leave behind.

“I want you to promise, that if you need anything, you'll contact me. Or my aunt -”

She smiles in that way he is coming to recognize again, and tilts her head. “Of course,” she says. He knows she won't.

“Well, you have the phone number, and my address. If you need anything.”

He knows how to reach her too, for now at least. If she leaves the old house he has no idea how he might do that.

  
  


  
  


Ten minutes before departure they stand, awkwardly, side by side on the platform, his suitcase at his feet. The late morning light picks out the gold in her hair, warm on the back of his neck. The station here is not nearly so busy as the one in Central, fewer business travelers, more heartfelt goodbyes.

He tries not to think of the last time they did this, of the last time they parted ways here when he left for the military academy. The past two weeks have been so much more pleasant than how he left things last time -

“Here,” she says, disrupting his thoughts. She holds out a newspaper. “So you can do the new crossword.”

“I can't take that,” he protests. “You should do it.”

“It's okay, I got a second one, while you were getting your ticket. So we can both do one.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

It's an unexpectedly sweet gesture and his chest feels tight as he takes the paper from her hands and tucks it away in the deep pocket of his coat.

“It's a long trip to Central,” she says. “Have to have something to keep you from getting bored.”

He smiles, rubbing the back of his neck. “I'll probably sleep for a lot of it, honestly,” he says. “Probably won't be getting much rest once I get there.”

“Don't work too hard.”

  
  


  
  


Five minutes left.

An awkward hug, different than the last time they said goodbye on this train platform, when they had stood nearly eye to eye.

“Don't forget me,” she mumbles into his shoulder, face pressed against the fabric of his coat.

“Of course,” he says, holding on tightly. Of course. How could he? They're tied together now, an alchemical bond formed between them – they are her father's legacy.

For a moment, standing there, it feels as though two futures stretch out before him. He could stay -

He has already chosen his path, though. Not just now, but the first time he left. The ticket in his hand is already paid for.

He drops his arms and she steps back, straightening her dress.

Goodbye feels weirdly final to say, given the circumstances.

“Take care of yourself,” he says instead.

“You too. Goodbye, Roy.”

She's not as much of a coward as he is.

  
  


  
  


The train is not crowded when he boards and he finds an empty bench, stowing his suitcase beneath the seat.

He watches her from the train window, face pressed against the glass like a child as though he might never see her again.

He might not. There is no telling in what way their paths might cross.

The platform is gone from sight quicker than he would like and he slouches in his seat, crossing one leg. The train builds speed and the countryside is rushing past, green fields smearing together with forests. The seat is already uncomfortable, a rip in the vinyl fraying by his hand.

He's restless.

Now that he's actually leaving he can't help but thinking of what comes next. Regardless of what Riza said he's still not confident he'll pass the state alchemy exam. And after that – well, who is ever ready to go to war? It's as though the train is hurtling toward his future and he's made too many decisions to get off now.

He will pass the exam, he tells himself firmly. He wishes he had as much confidence in himself as she does.

His copy of the transmutation circle is folded away neatly in the inner pocket of his jacket. He puts his hand to the pocket to reassure himself it's still there. He almost pulls it out to look at, half afraid he will have already forgotten what it looks like.

Instead he pulls the newspaper out. It's today's issue date but he doesn't look at the headlines – there's nothing but the conflict in the south east in the headlines these days. He'll be there soon enough.

He taps the paper against his knee.

At last he caves, looking down at the newspaper in his hand, flipping it open to the crossword. He pulls out his pencil from his pocket, running his thumb down the list of clues looking for something that leaps out to him.

“Seventeen down,” he mutters. Sharing electron pairs. “Covalent.”

Nineteen across. “Scientific discipline, elemental.” Seven letters, third letter C.

He grins.

“Alchemy.”

  
  


  
  



End file.
